Objective
by Daughter of the Bomb
Summary: X-Men: Origins  World War Two Victor Creed finds someone lurking in the forest. ONESHOT.


**Hey Guys, it's DotB with another fanfic.**

**So… I don't really know where this came from, even though I've kinda been playing with this idea for a while now… I just never really thought I'd use it such a context (it was going to be a flash back during one of my other fanfics, but has now become its own story).**

**Anywho, this is a one shot, but it might expand if you guys want more. This is from Victor's point of view in the World War 2 era (origin's Victor). This is kind of a combination of things; in one of the episodes of X-Men: Evolution it showed Wolverine and Captain America fighting together in WW2, but in X-Men: Origins we saw Wolverine and Victor fighting together. So this is kinda Evo + Origins history of occurrences concerning Victor.**

**I hope you guys enjoy ;D**

**(p.s. Max is Magneto)**

I could still smell the ashes of the dead.

We had left Auschwitz behind us two weeks ago, leaving bent and broken, saving the remnants of its victims; yet that scent remained undeniable among the other soldiers. It made everything harder for me and my brother; harder to concentrate, harder to sleep, harder to work.

I have seen war before this… But they all paled in comparison to this.

I've never been naïve, I know the world is a cold dark place that would rip a man apart if it had the ability; but now I know that the world is willing to create unearthly cruel men to do that job. I was suspicious of this theory before this second war, this real war, before; but I hadn't had complete evidence.

Yes, I was around when Booth shot Lincoln; but Booth wasn't the devil incarnate, he just misunderstood things, he had thought what he was doing was the right thing. Yea, he was wrong, and I mourned Lincoln's death just as much as the next one. But I don't truly hate Booth for what he did; in a way I kind of understood why he did what he did. Now I'm not saying that slavery is a good thing; I just understood why he shot the president with the tall hat; the simple minded so called patriot just thought he was defending his country. That's all.

But this… There was no reason for this.

And yet it had happened anyway.

I'm shell shocked; I don't need a nurse to tell me that, the war has corrupted my mind. Like I said earlier; I have seen and fought in wars before this, and have a thousand nights of nightmares for each battle I fought in each of those wars, but I can't deny this one. I can't calm myself enough to sleep anymore; these new nightmares have hooked their barbwire claws around my mind, tightening each second of each night; leaving me scared and terrified, horrified and frightened of what a single person can be capable of.

I've had thoughts like these for about a week now; and for the first time in a long time, it makes me want to permanently silence this mind of mine, even if that would mean ending myself with a snap of the neck and a sharp tug upwards.

It would hurt; but in a couple ways I feel decapitation is a death I could deserve.

I don't really think there is any other way to make my nightmares go away.

I look over at my brother, breathing calmly, rocked to sleep by a bullet to the head; he shoots himself every night before bed so he won't be plagued by his mind like I am. I don't want to give up so easily like he has, but night by night I am losing that strength.

I envy his sleep.

Here I am awake in our shabby tent. It's raining bitterly outside, and I don't want to try to go to sleep again; it's not worth it anymore. I lay my own blankets on my brother so that he can stay warm without my body heat as I get up and leave the tent we share.

Once I'm outside and in the forest camp ground we've constructed, I stretch my shattered sore muscles but remain silent as the dead so as not to awaken any of my fellow soldiers, but one of them is already awake.

"Good to see I'm not the only one who can't sleep…" I see the man where he stands, the mighty science experiment turned war hero, fearless Captain America himself; standing by a dying fire with a canteen of whiskey trembling in his hand, eyes wide and blood shot, gaining salt water and momentum as it falls, unyielding, down the brave youth's face.

America's pretty boy can't handle it much longer; I can see that pain in him.

But if he tries to put a gun to his head to fall asleep, he'll die.

"Rogers, mind if I get a sip of that?" I stalk until I am beside him, standing while he sits by the fire that has long ago lost its warmth. He shoots me a quick fearful glance, as frozen wheels on a broken track process what I asked of him, before handing me the canteen with a subtle flinch when I take it from his calloused finger; and I know that he finds my claws worthy of his fright. Who doesn't anymore? Steve's one of the people to have seen these hands at work, gutting anyone and everyone who's been labeled as an enemy.

He's back to studying the fire once the whiskey's in my hand, paying me no heed in an attempt to ignore me, thinking that once I'm done with my mouth full of alcohol that I'll leave him be. I watch him from the corner of my eye as I chug down more than half of the devil's drink, then leaning back as the steady rain fills the rest of the container back to its former full state. A small cracked smile makes itself at home on my unshaven face as I watch Rodgers and return his canteen to him and mumble a polite thanks to the hard working man. He doesn't even notice the difference from the full blast whiskey and this watered down concoction, making my smile remain pressed to my features.

There are moments when I can be good.

People forget that when in war.

I don't stay by Rogers's side for long, for soon I feel the electricity of energy startling my veins and jolting me awake further. I feel in need of a good run through the surrounding forest, and so I leave him to do so accordingly.

The animal buried in my brain is freedom from this war, and I take council with him whenever I find that I have the time to let him loose.

I go running for forever, coordinating my feet and hands in direct unison to follow me through at a fast cat like stampede of my body as my body pounces upon the slick mud. Again and again I tackle until I go into a numb state of mind in the freezing cold, soaked to my core in the relentlessly cruel rain. I can't truly feel my hands, but the blood circulation ignites in the tips of my fingers and is pumping at full throttle as my inhuman nails extend and grow before my eyes. My face burns from the cold, as does my exposed neck, my eyes are dry but I feel that my pupils have turned dilated in the slit of a feline's eye, my breath comes in smoke as though to reveal myself as the true self righteous beast I am.

I am worthy of my enemies nightmares.

My senses are blaring at their highest capacity; ears ringing, eyes watching, nose smelling, mouth watering, touch tantalizing.

Seventy five meters from me I notice HIM.

HE is only eighteen meters from OUR camp. How had I not noticed HIM before?

Soundlessly I run forth until I know that if I proceed with my animalistic canter that HE will learn of my presence. Carefully I hunt HIM, moving closer, his smell becoming all the more apparent as my range moves into his, to the point that I am merely twelve meters from his current destination.

This 'HIM' smells of days old piss on the around him, but I can also smell the dull stench of the urine displayed on his person, he'd wet himself about a week ago. It obvious that he didn't have good eating habits, his piss lacked nutrients, and I could not see nor could I smell any scraps of food; but some nearby non poisonous plants had been up rooted as sacrifice for his belly. Dirt clung to his body, covering his scent almost completely. What I found strange was that I could smell the salt water that had fallen from his eyes; but then again those eyes had been watching our camp, from which his hiding spot held an excellent view from where he had undoubtedly spied on us.

But above all else:

I could smell the ashes of the dead on him.

He might as well as written 'NAZI' on his forehead.

He had been at Auschwitz, most likely worked on cleaning out the furnaces as a lower level cadet; when we had stormed in and broken down the doors he had been one of the first to run, the coward. And now he thought he could help his fellow scum by spying on the Americans, ready to retell any overheard information to the next Nazi officer he met.

He had another thing coming.

I closed our distance swiftly, upon arriving by his spot; which was stationed in front of a wide tree facing our camp. He stayed crouched upon the ground, knees deep in the mud, torso stiff and on guard, like a pathetic little chipmunk scouting for any possible danger. Never knowing how close real danger truly was.

He would never see me coming, and I would give him no warning.

In seconds I had HIS neck in my clawed hand, my other hand pulling his arm in the opposite direction, dislocating the boney arm from its socket, made even easier from the lack of nutrition, sufficiently causing HIM blinding pain as he struggled against me as I…

Froze.

Shock held me stiff in its sudden embrace; I became a statue before this… kid.

This small child skeleton that had crouched among thorns, with nothing to eat and the only safety to cling to was either dead or ignorant; he had been frightened beyond anything ever known to his child mind, only thing keeping him alive was his intact instinct that had been graded into him since birth. He had cried and cried and cried silently, each tear shed for a body of another friend, dead.

Another sister, dead. Another mother, dead. Another father, dead.

He smelled of the ashes of the dead because he had held those ashes of family in his arms, pretending, wishing, dreaming, that someday he could hold them again, and tell them everything that he had never had the courage to say.

He had been… He had been _in_ Auschwitz.

The child broke free from my cold hands and went to the ground, tears forming again, but this time it was not for the pain of his mind, but for the pain of his body. He looked up to me, eyes wild and crazed with fear of punishment for his harmless following. No words sprouted from his lips, but his lips contorted as though to speak, but he never did.

We stayed like this for a while, with me stiff as concrete wall, him watching until the pain was too much and he turned away and grit his teeth.

"Who are you?"

"…My name is Max Eisenhardt… People once called me Magnus…"


End file.
